Is there any harm, or any other effect from dying in Spore, in cell or creature phase?

It seems to me that the only consequence is that you get a death mark to your evolution history. However you still get to keep the collected evolution discoveries (new parts), all the collected DNA points.

I mean sure, the game is partly based on the story you are creating for your species, and it's sad to see your little critter bite the dust. However, it doesn't seem like there's much point in trying to avoid risk. One could even go as far as to consider using death as a teleport back to home nest in creature phase (the poor little creature just wandered too far, oh the tragedy...) Is there something I'm missing here?

In all my playthroughs, I've never found a penalty to dying in the early stages.

However, I am emotional attached to a creature, so don't often die.

There are in-game awards/achievements, so it could be possible there is one for a certain number of deaths or playing through the game with no deaths, but I have never gotten one nor am very into these awards, so I can't tell you about them.

There can be a downside for dieing in creature stage--- it can trigger a migration event.

A migration can range from a minor inconvenience for a herbie or omni, to a significant hazard to continuing the game for a carnie. Carnies can only get food from dead creatures, and if you died and lost all your pack mates at the same time, you may not have sufficent resources to attack any of the surviving species to make dinner. Unless you built your creature to be able to sing well (not likely with carni mouths), dance, pose, and charm well (possible, but not likely as they don't aid in killing), you will now be on a "beat the clock" challenge. You will need to reach the new nest before you starve to death to reset your spawn point to be with your tribe. The old nest is only good for respawning. It doesn't have any recruitable pack mates at it.

This situation is why I no longer wipe out the early species. So I have snacks for these inconveniences--- as well as snacks for when I'm exploring but can't find anything suitable for dinner among the new species and my current carnie capabilities.